She grabbed the roasting pan with the chicken off the top ofthe stove, snarled, and threw it so it splashed grease and chicken across thebare floor where that Kazakh rug had lain before her last tantrum. I’m lucky I’dalready taken it to the cleaners — curry makes a damned good dye, stains evensoak into kitchen plastic. I’m not sure the pros could have gotten that out without damaging the naturalcolors.
She threw other things, hot and sharp and heavy. She screamed,sometimes words, curses and insults and threats, mostly just noise. I tried tokeep my head through the whole squall. We didn’t need both of us jumping off the deep end. I let it wash over me, defenseonly, and tried to cut the environmental damage.
She finally wound down and left, slamming the door behind her.Damned lucky I was a wizard, a stronger wizard than Sandy even when she had herwits on straight. Otherwise, I’d have ended up in a hospital or the morgue, andshe would have landed in jail.
XV
Okay, I’ve already told you that I don’t have womenfigured out. I didn’t think I’d done anything that justified Sandy’s blast. Butthen, I couldn’t understand the way Cash was acting, a sensible if hard-assedwoman, and obviously I hadn’t known Maggie as well as I should have. That madea clean sweep, three for three. Third strike, you’re out.
I can practically see you scratching your head right aboutnow, wondering why I put up with Sandy. Thing is, Sandy looked normal to me. I never had a baseline fornormal.
I’ve already mentioned my father. Mom, well, Mom crept aroundthe house in a bathrobe and curlers most days and drank or popped Valium or didboth, except for the times when Dad finally got too much for her and she criedand screamed and threw things and then stormed out of the house. Then we wouldn’tsee her for two or three days until she ran out of money and came home and Dadwould slap her around a little and all was right with the world. I grew uphaving to get my own meals a lot. That’s how I learned to cook.
So I stared at the door for a few minutes, just standingthere, wondering if Sandy would come back and apologize. Gives you a hint ofjust how dense I can be. Then I stirred my fat ass and cleaned up after thetornado, dumping beans and potatoes in the garbage but I managed to salvage thechicken and wiggled the drumsticks to make a good-enough guess on how muchlonger it needed in the oven. I hate wasting food.
Particularly good food. That curried stuffing and the spicedgarlic rub she used could match up with the best of fusion cuisine, but it wasprobably wasted on me. She’d had a bottle of Chianti opened and breathing, arougher wine than you’d normally serve with chicken but a good match for therobust spicing she used. Enough wine for two people, two large people, and I finished it off.
And then I locked up and set my guards and alarms, stillhalf-expecting Sandy to come back. As fast as she could explode, she could calmdown and regret that explosion just as quickly. It was as if a stick ofdynamite could look around at the settling dust and chunks of . . .stuff . . . falling out of the sky and say that it was sorry.Anyway, then I went to bed and actually slept, in spite of all the crap theworld had dumped on my head that day.
Of course, I paid for the wine in the morning. I don’t knowwhy, but I can handle more alcohol as whiskey than in other forms. Or maybethat’s just an illusion, and I actually drink less when I’m drinking my drug ofchoice. Never felt like doing the measurements and calculations to find outwhich.
Be that as it may, I stumbled through my wakeup with a banginghead and a mouth like the floor of a horse barn, all straw and sawdust with agenerous dash of fresh manure. I did notresort to the hair of the dog, one slim step away from admitting that I was analcoholic. I went with coffee instead, strong good coffee, and a few frozenwaffles thawed in the microwave, spread with strawberry jam. No alcohol in that.
So you can’t accuse me of being drunk when I wobbled down theback stairwell and out to the parking lot, deciding that maybe just this once I’ddrive to the office. Clouds had rolled in again, with a threat of heavy rainlater to justify the car. I muttered a minor prayer of thanks that the sun didn’tstab me in the eyes. As usual, even with a hangover, I scanned the parking lotfor threats before I left the cover of the building and its nice thick brickwalls that could stop a slug or blast. Paranoia is a survival gene.
And five steps out from the door, I felt a pricking of mythumbs. I froze. Something in the air, something in the aether, some soundbelow the threshold of hearing or outside the frequency response of the normalhuman ear, I don’t know. Something said “Kratz.”
I’d already thrown my guards around me, almost as subconsciousas breathing or my heartbeat. My car sat by itself, the way I always left it,third row of parking, say maybe a hundred feet away. I took a slow stepsideways, then a second, then a third, hand on the butt of my SIG under myjacket. I was triangulating, taking a bearing on whatever felt wrong. Somethingabout the old state cop cruiser. . . .
A step closer, another, more, reaching out with six or sevensenses at once, all on hyper. Something under the rear of the car, under thetrunk and tucked up against the gas tank, smallish, dirty-asphalt colored soyou wouldn’t notice it right off. Kratz vibrations. Radio tracker? I poked atit with my brain.
The world flashed yellow, followed by orange and billowingblack. Air squeezed me, metal shreds flying, broken glass sparkling against thegray sky, the rear end of the car lifting five or six feet
